Ornamental Cast-iron Staircase

We’re expecting!!! Or so an uninformed bystander might have thought as Eli raced around the church house last Sunday chanting, “I’m gonna be a big sister!!!” This is actually just a song from “Big Sister Dora,” Eli’s favorite DVD. Though Eli surely sang it at church so often and with such fervor that some were certainly misled. Lest our readers, who tend universally to doze after our first paragraph, be similarly misled, let us here clarify that Lia is not pregnant. Neither, reassuringly, is Justin.

It has been, in many respects, a very long week. Justin had law journal assignments Monday and Tuesday evenings, bishopric meeting Wednesday evening, institute Thursday evening, and Medieval club Friday evening. This last is a joke and a lie, but the first four are true and give some sense of how long the week was for Lia.

But the week was not without its highlights. These were, in no particular order:

To scrape together a little extra cash (“extra” is misleading, as it implies an addition to a preexisting quantity) Lia has taken on some occasional babysitting. From time to time she watches an adorable little three-year-old Israeli named Itamar, a lad who smiles unflaggingly and submits good-naturedly to Julia’s peremptory directives. One such directive came at lunchtime on Tuesday, when a hungry Itamar jumped eagerly into the devouring of his sandwich. Julia promptly berated her new friend, lecturing at length about the necessity and importance of praying before one eats. Because this is a rule Julia herself almost categorically ignores, Lia was taken aback by Julia’s zeal. Mother and daughter had a little talk later about temperance and tact in sharing the gospel.

Lia made some warm cider for the rest of the family on Friday, when the weather outside was miserably cold and more miserably rainy. Eli loved the stuff, and his been calling impatiently ever since for “MORE SPIDER!!!”

On Thursday after Joy School, Julia and the rest of the joyful clan, with their respective mothers in tow, went to the Lauren Bayly homestead for a post-jubilian romp. The girls loved it because the Bayly home is full of fun toys and was on this occasion densely populated by their dearest friends. Lia loved it because Lauren made a smashing good soup.

On Wednesday night, while Justin was off saving the world (or at least the bishop), Eli and Julia, true to disobedient form, were jumping on our bed. Julia bumped into Eli at one point, and Eli fell smack onto Justin’s filing cabinet and from there onto the floor, landing on her head. This was disconcerting to say the least. Though Eli appeared to be all right after the customary cry, Lia was still quite concerned and became a bit emotional at bedtime as she prayed that Eli’s head and shunt would be okay. The next day, whenever it was Julia’s turn to pray, her usual litany of items was followed by a faux crack in her voice and a histrionic plea that Eli’s head would be okay. Quite the dramatist, our Julia, even in prayer.

Sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning our student loan finally went through with our bank. This was a good thing, since our account had, by that time, about four dollars in it. The fridge was bare and, more pressingly, so was the diaper-wipe dispenser. Justin had taken to eating his shoe laces. But the loan finally came in and we were rescued. To celebrate Lia and the girls raced, not to the grocery store, but to Wal-Mart, where they contributed to the coffers of the evil empire by buying batteries for the princess dolls lately arrived in a package from Nin. With these batteries, Belle and Sleeping Beauty do not spout inanities like so many talking Barbies, but they rather embrace their own superficiality and glow incandescently while their backs make noise and their tricolor skirts rotate positions. “What wonders beyond this could heaven ever hold?” asked Eli. “In heaven,” Julia answered matter-of-factly, “the skirts have FIVE settings.”

Justin celebrated the arrival of our loan by buying a case book and the tax code for an unseemly sum—it was a utility transfer of such epically irrational proportions as to cast doubt on all the basic premises of economic thought.

On Saturday, after President Hinckley’s funeral, Justin joined forces with an intrepid band of New Haven elders to effectuate the most formidable move in the history of the quorum. Our task was to transfer the belongings of an hyper-possessive (and mildly paranoid) long-time collector of assorted furniture and trinkets (euphemism for packrat) from a bad neighborhood in New Haven to a less bad neighborhood in New Haven. It took nearly seven hours. And this with eighteen elders on the job at one point or another. Still, it was good to serve, especially after the inspiration of the funeral. And as a reward for his pains, Justin returned home to the happy surprise of a phone call from the inestimable Andrew Stacey, a beloved mission companion (Justin’s trainee) and friend of long standing, now a medical student at the Ohio State University—better known to our readers as the Buffalo Bills of college football’s BCS title game.

Just one note about the funeral, which was magnificently rich from beginning to end (and through which we both cried from beginning to end). Justin was at the chapel holding Julia on his lap (Lia and Eli stayed home, where the latter mercifully napped through the entire proceedings). When President Monson stood to announce the program, Julia turned her beautiful little face up to her dad’s and said in a firm, excited voice, “Daddy, I know this guy! He’s President Monson!” She spoke a greater truth than she knew. For we do indeed “know this guy”—this mighty apostle and counselor of some forty-five years; this intrepid leader and worker of miracles, such as a dedicated temple behind the Iron Curtain; this “robust, buoyant, whirlwind of a man,” as Elder Holland describes him; and now this senior apostle and presiding high priest in the Church and Kingdom of God on the earth—“President Monson” indeed, in a fuller sense than we have ever before styled him thus. It was a very touching moment—followed by many more touching moments in the course of the day.

On Sunday afternoon we took a family drive (ruse for getting the girls to nap—only worked for Julia) in nearby Guilford through some well-to-do shorefront neighborhoods. It was beautiful, leading Lia to question her commitment to perpetual penury. Justin, however, who like St. Francis would wed Poverty were she a woman, remained unyielding.

It has been a long week, but on the whole a very good one.

[The following pictures are random shots around the house, and from a trip to Mystic Seaport several weeks ago upon which we neglected to report. Thanks, Jeni and Samuel!]